To Chase the Horizon
by emerald1198
Summary: Katie Matlin was more than ready to leave behind Toronto and all the ghosts that haunt it, but now that she's fallen into a mind-numbing love with Jake Martin, a local boy with no intentions of ever being more than that, she must decide which regrets she's most likely to forgive one day. Multi-shot.
1. I

**Wow, has it been a while. Multi-shot. Jatie. I'm not sure how long it will be, but I certainly don't classify this as a mulit-_fic. _Oh, no. This is a multi-_shot _and will probably be around four or five chapters.**

**As always, views, favorites, and alerts are greatly appreciated, and reviews, if you have the time, make my day.**

…

"University of Hawaii, huh?"

Clare Edwards spears a leaf of lettuce that's too long to cram into her mouth and then results to shaking it off of her fork; she does this idly as she asks Katie the question, her shoulders and her voice suggesting nonchalance, but her eyes betraying her. The girl is a junior, one year younger than Katie (though infinitely wiser), and she's got blue, piercing eyes that shine sense and reason on everything.

"Yeah," Katie murmurs, head down, twirling a carrot through Ranch Dressing, "Yeah, I guess."

"Well, you got in, right?" Clare asks, and it's then that Katie realizes her previous answer sounded more like a question than anything.

"Yeah."

"And it's the best of the schools you applied to?"

"Yeah."

"And they've got a real good journalism program, you said, right?"

"Yeah."

Clare jerks her head with finality, brings her books close to her chest, and huffs. "Then, you're going."

"Yeah, I guess."

…

Katie finds him in the back of the cabin, glistening in sawdust and back turned to her as he balances on the ladder propped against the house. The boy works with such a steady rhythm, hands nimble, eyes focused; the forest moves around him, sparing only a curious glance – the sunshine pouring into the trees, creating it's own pattern between the leaves, the birds chirping, the squirrels scampering through the ferns with a swiping sort of sound. And Katie's sure that this is some kind of an art.

He doesn't notice her on his own; Katie thinks that time could pass like heartbeats, hours and hours of this rhythm, and he would never sense her behind him. "Jake?" She finally breathes, and her voice is gentle and lulling as if to slip its way into the song of the forest unnoticed. But with just the sound of her, Katie hears it all quiver and knows she's been unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, her boyfriend turns to her with the softest of eyes, his features settling back into his face and hair ruffling a bit under the breeze, as one can see the grass on a plain rise and fall with wind. "Is school really out already?" Jake chuckles, "I must have lost track of time."

"I'll say," Katie mutters, and when she hears the bitterness and feels the rhythm still to a halt around her, she knows the frustration she felt on the way here is resurfacing.

Jake's eyes tighten a little at the edge to her voice.

"This is the second time this week you've missed."

His mouth falls open then, his jaw tightening and tongue curling into his bottom teeth. "I had work to do," he says simply, his shoulders falling like there's nothing else to it.

"You missed two quizzes, Jake."

"Good. I wasn't ready for them."

Katie takes a sharp breath. "Well, maybe you ought to study tonight. You're going to have to take them tomorrow – along with that Chemistry test from Tuesday."

Still up on the ladder, he leans an elbow against the cabin's gutter and turns from her, looking through his arms down to the ground. "Don't know if I'll be there tomorrow."

"Jake," she finally protests, her voice loud and defined. The forest freezes over around them. "Your grades are going to _plummet._ It'll look horrible on a college application."

Rarely is Jake Martin rigid. He's a lanky boy, made up of gawky limbs and boyish features, pure skin and a soft smile. His shoulders fall in front of him half the time. But as Katie goes on, they lock up at his sides.

"Did it ever cross your mind, Katie, that maybe I don't give a damn what those college deans think of me?"

She huffs. Seldom does the boy raise his voice, let alone curse without a snort fitted in. "Jake, I know your mind is set on taking over your father's business, but he's making you apply to college for a _reason._ I just don't want to see you change your mind later and" –

It's then that he whirls around, maneuvering down from the ladder with quite the agility, and steps closer to face her. "Why," he demands, "is everyone so convinced I'm going to change my mind? You can't spend your whole life with one foot in and one foot out!"

"No, but you can spend your _adolescence_ that way."

Jake eyes her in disbelief. _"But that's not us anymore!" _He yells, hands wild, voice straying away from its usual low, throaty pitch,"We're not little kids, Katie!It's about time we figure out how we're going to make it in this world, don't you think? And I'm not getting any closer to becoming a contractor by sitting in classrooms all day."

He kicks a pebble into the flowerbeds then, swallows hard, and glances at the trees. It's the signal to give up.

"Okay, okay," she mutters, taking a step back, letting the fire between them die down, "I didn't mean to start anything. I just" – she takes a moment to look out over the sky and breath – "I just worry about you is all."

It's a real thing to watch Jake Martin simmer down – a real thing, meaning solid and precise, a process that never changes in the slightest. First to break are those shoulders; they slump forward again, ease down. Next comes his fists, clenched firmly at his side; she watches as his fingers uncurl, and it is always the pointer one, on both hands, to stay still. Usually, after the fists, he'll swallow once, too, which he does today, though very lightly. And finally, the eyes break, thawing back to a warm blue like the ocean when the sunlight strikes it, and glisten briefly. Then, and only then, does Katie let go of her breath.

"I know," he chuckles lightly after the transformation is complete. He moves to her then, placing two, sun-warmed hands on her bare shoulders and looking her in the eyes. "But you worry _too much_, Katie."

"I know," is all she can get out, because his eyes are smoldering and his breath is mingling with hers, and more than anything, she just wants to kiss him.

"But I think that's what I love about you," Jake finishes, and before she can give in, _he_ does, leaning down to press his lips to hers in a slow, familiar rhythm. It's the same one that held the land moments ago, and Katie's beginning to realize that she's only welcome to it when she's connected to him.

…

"I think Cam and I are going to go bowling tonight."

Katie shifts, turning her back away from the bed frame and looking up to her sister who is perched on the bed itself. Half an hour ago, Maya called her in to help with a Geometry problem, but now that this is settled, the textbook is tucked away across the room, and the two sisters sit quietly with the TV turned on, rarely talking, rarely watching. But they learned long ago that this is better than being alone.

With this, Katie stands up, arching her back painfully, and nudges Maya over playfully and without much retort. "That's nice," she murmurs, suddenly feeling very tired as she curls up to one of her sister's pillows.

This, however, gets a set of wide eyes from the girl beside her. Maya Matlin is a small, thin girl with a heart-shaped face that she got (and Katie never did) from their father, but she has the same eyes as her sister, blue and light. And when they are in disbelief, clear and wide, they are lovely. Katie wonders if Cam notices this; if she were to guess, she'd say he does.

"What?" Katie half asks, half chuckles.

"Did you just say you think the idea of me going out with Cam is _nice_?"

"Of course," she laughs, "I like Cam. He's sweet to you."

"Last time you saw us together, you were sitting in _between _us in a movie theater. _Chaperoning._" As if at just the thought of it, Maya blushes a little.

Katie just snorts. "Yeah, well, I've deemed him good enough for you."

"And you're not going to give me the whole 'broken-heart' spiel you did after Drew dumped you? Not even the 'boys play games' warning before I leave?"

Katie shrugs. "I already did. But it's your choice to date – not mine."

Maya seems to consider this for a moment, and she bats her eyelashes a few times. "I know I'm only fourteen, but I just – I like Cam. I like him a lot." – Maya takes a fringed, square pillow between her arms – "I really think he might be my Jake," she sighs.

And Katie's eyes, having been closing slowly in exhaustion, snap wide open.

…

A car door shuts outside. Katie can hear it from where she sits on the windowsill of Clare's room, and she attempts to subtly crane her neck to the side.

"It's not him," Clare chuckles, and the fact that her friend hasn't even spared a glance up from her textbook makes Katie feel sheepish as ever.

"Oh," is all she can mutter.

This makes Clare smirk even more. "He's working late tonight."

Katie almost responds with another single-syllable, but her curiosity gets the best of her. "Clare, don't you think he ought to be coming to school?"

"Yeah," her friend states simply, turning a page in her English book.

"Well, do you ever talk to him about it?"

Clare looks up then, studies Katie for a moment, and finally closes the book to sit upright on her bed. "Sure, I do," she shrugs, "but whatever Jake does has nothing to do with me."

It's strange to hear Jake's stepsister talk this way, so calm and indifferent. Because if there's anyone more neurotic than Katie herself (or, at least, who she used to be), it's Clare Edwards. Katie's best friend lives life like she's constantly late for something, and if it weren't for her other half, Eli Goldsworthy, a boy who says and writes what he feels, regardless of whether or not it makes any sort of sense, Katie knows that Clare's mind would be far too rational for anyone to put up with.

Katie wonders if perhaps she'd be the same way without Jake to remind her to _breath _now and again.

"But what if he starts failing?" She demands; she simply can't help it.

Clare sighs. "Katie, you and I both know that I'm the first person to knag Jake about this kind of thing, but he's eighteen now. He's a legal adult; he can do whatever he wants."

"Including throw away his _future?"_

Clare gives her a funny look. "You think being a contractor entails 'throwing away your future?'"

That's when Katie feels her stomach coil up. Of course, this isn't what she's meant, but she can see the accusation starting to gleam in her friend's eyes. "You know that's not what I'm trying to say."

Clare leans back against the headboard of her bed now. "Honestly, Katie, I'm not sure I do," she says, eyes on the opposite wall, "Look, I can see what's going on here – and I haven't said anything because it's none of my business and I know what it's like to be scared of the future. But don't you think it's about time to get real?"

Katie huffs unevenly and watches the trees outside as Clare continues.

"You and Jake are two _really _different people. And in half a year, you're going to be on the other end of the world, and he's still going to be _right here."_

Katie cringes when the words are said aloud, cringes because she knows what Clare's said is true and knows she doesn't have the right to be mad, knows she's being irrational. But Katie also knows that she has no idea how to start this kind of talk with her boyfriend, knows that he _must_ have thought about it at one point.

And so she slides off the windowsill and starts for the door, fuming for a reason she can't fathom. "Katie?" Clare asks, but her lips are still.

"Katie, c'mon, I'm just being honest with you," she hears Clare protest behind her as she descends the stairs, "I care about you both, and I don't want to see either of you get hurt!"

Jake's sister follows her out to the driveway, still pleading her name, but Katie just slams the door of her BMW behind her and starts the engine.

"Well, _fine_ then!" Clare screams, and it's an odd scene, Clare Edwards standing in front of her house in only shorts and a camisole, shouting at a girl with sunglasses in a shiny new car, "Just keep running away from all of your problems, Katie! But if you think that's going to make them disappear, you're wrong, and you know it!"

Katie keeps her eyes on the road, though. She fears the light of sense and reason in her best friend's eyes.

…

She sees the name every time she looks at her contact list (the names in her phone are in alphabetical order), and she's never deleted it. Not even in a fit of rage back a few months ago.

And as much as she hates to admit it, Katie knows the real reason she's kept Bianca DeSousa's number this whole time; it is, after all, the same reason she got it.

Surprisingly enough, the girl has kept her number as well. Or at least memorized it. Because when her voice sounds on the other line, it is a crackled, puzzled, and slightly chuckling, "Katie _Matlin?"_

Oh, God. What is she doing? What is she thinking? It's eleven o'clock on a Saturday night, and Katie is drowsy from the Benadryl and Advil – and shit, she's still waiting for an answer.

"Uh . . . hey."

_"Hey." _

"So, um . . ." she wracks her brain for something to say, anything casual, "What's up?"

"Why'd you call me?" The voice on the other line bluntly demands, and Katie's not surprised; she should have known better than to try and subtly work into a subject with Bianca DeSousa.

"Are you . . . Would you want to hang out tonight?"

There's a scoff. "You've got to be joking."

"Um . . . no?" The words are a question, and even though Bianca is miles away, Katie's face is burning up.

"Look, Matlin, I'm not the one to go to for _that _anymore, so don't waste your" –

"That's _not _why I'm calling." At least, she doesn't think it is, "I just . . . I need a night out with someone who isn't so . . ." Katie lets the sentence trail off; she's not sure what she was about to say anyway.

And just when Katie fears she's insulted the girl, Bianca's spark of a voice picks up again. This time, Katie can hear the smirk behind it. "Sensible?"

"Exactly."

…

"You don't do _that _anymore, right?"

They're in a bar on the outside of the city; the air is heavy and the music low, and no one asked them for their fake I.D.'s even though both girls were prepared for it. The man that let them in was old and worn with wrinkles around his eyes, which were dull and faded, and Katie has a feeling that he knows they're underage but that he doesn't care. She can't decide if there's any sort of poetry to that; perhaps, the old man is simply too tired to bother with the police.

It takes her a moment to realize what Bianca is referring to, but when she does, Katie shakes her head firmly. "No. No, of course not."

"Good," the girl mutters and twists the bracelet around her wrist.

And it's as she watches the girl's hand that Katie notices the ring on her left finger, a silver band with a clean-cut, single diamond. "Y-you're marrying him?" The question comes out before Katie can stifle it, and then she's cursing inside of her head. _Of course, she's not, you idiot. They're eighteen. Why would you ask a question like –?_

"Yeah."

Katie feels herself go numb. "Oh," is all she can breathe. Lately, it's been her response to most everything.

"Yeah," Bianca murmurs again, and this time, she twists the ring.

Katie can't help it then. "You really think he's the one?"

"I know he is."

But after the girl says the words, she takes a long drink from her bottle.

…

His fingertips dance up the length of her shoulder, stopping to rest on the blade of it, and everything is so warm. The blanket is heavy, and Jake's breathing is even, and now that even this can't ease her mind completely, Katie knows nothing will.

Not blurry nights with Bianca or vacant, now silent study sessions with Clare.

The rhythm is faltering. She can feel it.

And so when he tries to pull her closer to his chest, Katie rises, sitting upright on his bed and looking out at the night sky. "Come with me," she breathes, as quiet as the forest outside, the same one that used to sing and chirp and shuffle.

"What?"

Jake moves to sit with her, placing a hand on either shoulder.

"Come with me to Hawaii."

He laughs a little; it's the same chuckle it's always been, but without the rhythm, the sound is unsettling and nearly unfamiliar. "You know I can't, Katie."

"Why?" She asks. It was meant to be sharper, but her voice is breaking.

"Because I can't," he murmurs and starts to kiss her neck. She lets him for a few moments, but in the end, must turn away. Suddenly, she's starting to realize how much each of his touches now may hurt her in only a few months.

"Then what are we doing?" She demands, suddenly angry, suddenly _livid. _And she repeats it with more profundity, because her voice is crescendoing even though there's really nothing left to say. "What. Are. We. Doing?"

"Where is this coming from, Katie?"

She slides off the bed and crosses through the moonlight and into the corner's shadows, a few feet from the door. Instead of answering him, she rests her head against the wall, her back turned to the boy who lays startled and disheveled on the bed. The headlights from outside dance over his face.

"What is this? Th-this . . . _thing _that we've got between us, is it just going to _end _in a few months? Has it been like that from the beginning, because I must have missed the memo."

The silence drapes over her back, and she can't tell if it's enveloping or drowning her. The numbness never leaves; there's a part of her (a large, loud part, in fact) that wants nothing more than to crawl back into bed and forget about Hawaii and Clare and the ring on Bianca DeSousa's finger, but it's all too late now.

Jake still hasn't said anything, so she whispers, soft and truthful – yet futile now – that she loves him.

And even to that, he is silent.

"You know, I didn't need this," she says, her voice cracking and breath stuttering. "I was done with Degrassi. I was _so _done. There wasn't anything keeping me here; in fact, pretty much everything was driving me _away_ from here. All I wanted was to get as far away as possible, and then _you_ came along and screwed everything up!"

"That's not what I meant to do," Jake mutters, looking at her feet, the only part of her still in the light.

And she knows that if there was ever a chance of them making it, this right here is not the answer she needed to hear.

…

By the time she gets home, her make-up is smeared halfway down her face, the eyeliner chalky and dusty. The cab driver, who was a nice man with an unfortunately thickly accented tongue, took a solid five minutes attempting to spit out the question "would you like to talk about it?" Despite the struggle, the driver continued to rephrase and enunciate until Katie understood him, and after all that, she felt rude denying him. So, she blubbered out a simple sentence or two, and, while at first the man's eyes twisted in confusion, it didn't take long for him to pick up on what Katie was saying.

"My wife at home, she didn't want me to leave. But things are better here. One day, she will come to live with me."

In the mirror, his eyes, faded and lined by wrinkles, softened. "Thank you," Katie had whispered in return, and left him ten dollars more than the charge.

Her apartment appears at first to be empty, her father still at work and her mother out shopping. Maya, Katie assumes, is locked up in her room, surrounded by textbooks and old calculators.

But when she stumbles into her room, tears flowing freely at this point and small, mangled sobs getting caught on her lips, Katie finds her little sister sifting through her closet, unwanted blouses and skirts blanketing the floor beneath her.

At first glance, Maya bends down and scoops up a fist-full of the fabric. "I'll clean it up, I swear, and I know you don't like it when I borrow your clothes, but" –

Despite Katie's last moment attempt to wipe away the tears and straighten out her face, it is, predictably, of no use. Maya hesitates, her features becoming soft and careful. "What's going on, Katie?"

"It's nothing," she breathes. "I'm fine. It's nothing."

"Katie, what's wrong?"

Rarely in life does one cry and then proceed to assure those around her that it's "nothing" without expecting them to try again. But this time, it is all Katie wants to be left alone. To curl up in the warmth of her bed sheets and stare at the patterns on the ceiling until they start to dance before her eyes.

So, she takes a different approach with her sister. "I just want to sleep. Just let me sleep for a little while."

And there's something about the way she says the words that makes undoubtedly her sister, and even Katie herself, worry that if she closes her eyes right now, she won't open them again.

…

"Katie, open the door."

She's not sure why, but for a split second, Katie swears it is Bianca DeSousa's voice outside of her room. Of course, it's only Clare, and when she lets herself into the room, she just looks at Katie for a long time with sad, pitying eyes. Sharp, nonetheless. Always so sharp.

"None of this was supposed to happen," Katie whimpers, and Clare bites her lip, as if appraising her patient.

"I know."

"I wasn't ready for this."

And Katie doesn't know if her own words are referring to leaving or falling in love in the first place. All she knows is that Clare Edwards is here for a reason, and it is to finish her with one final blow. To force Katie to meet her gaze of sense and reason once and for all.

"Life never waits for you to be ready," she says, and Katie tries to blink, but it's too late.

…

Graduation day is overwhelming. It's the _thoughts_, Katie realizes, that are the loudest, most unbearably tear-inducing sounds. Many girls with shallow eyes cry; they cry dainty, little tears and hug each other and make promises they don't intend on keeping.

But the genuine people, the ones who don't talk much (and even the ones that used to talk a lot, used to cry dainty tears, but don't today) – they take it all in, go through the motions in a daze as they memorize it all.

Perhaps, it's Fiona Coyne who makes Katie's throat ache the most. The former high school aristocrat walks the grounds with gentle, aged eyes, hand in hand with her girlfriend, Imogen, a small, owl-eyed girl with nothing to do but move forward. That's how she's always been, Katie thinks, and wonders if perhaps, that's the best way to live life.

Suddenly, there is an overpowering urge within Katie to approach the two girls, to apologize to them for the moment that shattered any chance of a friendship between them and also for the little things, anything she ever may have done to hurt them, even the things she didn't realize.

And with that thought comes the wish to do that for everyone around her. Even the girls with their shallow eyes. If not today, some day, they'll appreciate it.

But the day is heavy, and her throat is melting, and before she knows it, Fiona Coyne and Imogen are gone. She looks for them in the sea of scarlet cloaks, but not hard; she has a feeling they were meant to get away from her. Life, Katie realizes, just isn't life without some things to regret.

…

Jake calls her in the middle of the night, halfway through the summer. They haven't talked since she left him, confused and concealed by the shadows months ago, and not a day has passed since then when she didn't think about calling. Maybe, it was supposed to be her to break the silence; Katie's not entirely sure. At any rate, it's Jake to give in first, and she knows that's rare.

His voice is wide-awake for the first time since she's met him. She can't tell if he's crying or just stuttering a lot. "Look, Katie," he tells her, and then pauses for a long moment to even out his breath, "I _hate_ that we" – He stops.

"I mean, I lie awake every night, and" – He stops.

"I've never felt this way about a girl before, and I just don't know how to" – He stops.

Is her heart soaring or dropping? She can't seem to tell.

"I just don't want to be in love," he finally breathes.

There is a long pause, and the rhythm, once and for all, shatters beyond repair. Many times, he asks her if she's still there, pleads with her to say something, but Katie is numb. She feels as if she is a ghost of herself in the moonlight, looking down at a girl who keeps trying to speak. And she's quiet until he hangs up.

That night, she watches the girl cry herself to sleep.

…

The morning she leaves for the airport is a windy, rainy one. The rustling of the trees is a menacing sound, and it's impossible to believe that months ago, she was welcome to the rhythm of the forest. In fact, it's impossible to believe she had almost found a place here in this city lurking of ghosts.

Clare Edwards' shape cloys in the mist, her curls, now an amber tinted of gray under the stormy sky, as if slung with cobwebs, whipping about her face which is bowed to the soggy earth. She is still and solemn, a messenger sent to bid Katie her final farewell – or perhaps her warning to never return.

"I don't expect you to call," she murmurs, eyes tired and face soft as she lifts the last of the suitcases into the back of Katie's BMW, a car that has lost its shine somewhere along the way. "I get it; I'm the little sister. End things with him, and you end things with me."

She ought to be wounded by the messenger's presumption, Katie knows, and had she known in advance that Clare would say this, Katie's sure she would have expected herself to shrink back, to object immediately. But with the sky fading away and the trees hissing at her to never come back to this dreaded place, Katie supposes maybe it would be best to forget Clare.

After all, it is a foolish thing to leave one light burning in a valley of darkness.

"Maybe, I still will," she mutters and thinks about tagging on the clause "in time," but that, she decides, is a line to be derived from an absurd chic-flick attempting to model an ending open to the mind.

The junior, infinitely wiser than Katie, with her blue, piercing eyes that shine sense and reason on everything just stares dully at her now, eyes watered down to the color of the sky. And Katie looks into them for the answer that always used to be there when she needed it, but there is nothing.

Clare's gaze falls on the front door of the house where Katie's mother slips out into the wind and her little sister hugs her arms around herself, and she breathes a goodbye that is carried off by the breeze.

"I'll call," Katie says after her, already feeling the ache of never seeing Clare again, "I will. I mean it. I don't care about him."

And Clare just gives her a small, half-hearted smile that seems to say there is no truth in Katie's words. It's a gesture that worries Katie, for Clare Edwards is rarely wrong.


	2. II

Hey, guys. Long time, no see. Sorry about the wait on this, I really am. I was incredibly happy with the amount of feedback this story brought in. Thanks so much to all who reviewed, favorited, alerted, or just simply read.

Part 2. Enjoy.

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_The night of the departure._

.

Clare doesn't talk to him when she gets home.

His little sister rubs at her eyes a lot and stares into space all through dinner, but she doesn't cry, and she doesn't talk. And so Jake follows her lead.

…

The flight attendant keeps offering her a coke. As if carbon dioxide, fructose, and phosphoric acid mixed together is the drink of the gods. Katie's not thirsty, but part of her wants to snap her head over and say, "Actually, I want a _Sprite."_ The thing is, ordering a different flavor soda than the one the flight attendant keeps suggesting isn't all that ironic. Because, for one: Katie's pretty sure the lady hasn't offered nearly as many times as her irritable brain, suffering through a cyclone right now, has imagined it to be. And second: even if she were to say it, Katie doesn't think she'll be able to pull off the emphasis or the sarcasm needed to make it sound even a little sardonic.

So, she just shakes her head and looks out the window and waits for the woman behind the cart to stop looking at her with those pity-filled eyes. She clenches her hands and waits, because she's seen that look before, seen it in the eyes of her teachers after The Addiction, seen it in the shallow, fakes eyes of the girl who used to be her best-friend, seen it in the deep, philosophical eyes of the girl that used to be her next best-friend.

And Katie's found that, no matter where that look comes from, she hates it. That's something not to be said about most things in life. But for The Look, it's true.

She hopes to God that this is a one-time thing, this stranger burning a whole in her back with that gaze, seeming to see right inside of her, because Katie really doesn't think she'll be able to take it if The Look follows her here.

…

The last time he woke up screaming, he was seven, and Mom was dead.

Jake doesn't really remember much; there are just a few fuzzy memories of the funeral, standing on his tip-toes to peer into the coffin where his corpse of a mother lie with her cold, drained face. And he remembers, for a split second, being scared of the body, and then going into the bathroom to cry, because you shouldn't be scared of your mother at her own funeral.

But waking up in the middle of that night, yelling at the top of his lungs – for some reason he's never figured out, that's a memory that he can still feel sometimes, relive if he wants to (which, of course, he's never wanted to).

The thing about waking yourself up is that your voice, like anything when you first open your eyes, seems so surreal. And so there he was, a little seven year old whose freckles looked strange in the darkness, screaming with everything he had at an empty, shadowy room, and all that was really running through his cloudy, endlessly disoriented mind was that there was this extremely loud noise around him.

And not until after his father ran in and held him did it occur to seven-year-old Jake that the noise was coming from himself.

But tonight, Glen Martin is out with another woman – who's nice and funny and doesn't try to be his mom ever, but still. And Jake doesn't hate his dad for moving on, remarrying even, because that's just what you do in life.

However, right now, right in this moment, as he yells into the darkness and stares at the moonlight like light, itself, is something foreign, Jake Martin can't help but hate his dad for not being here.

…

Back before everything, before the falling in love and falling out of it, before the ring on Bianca DeSousa's finger, before Clare started to work her sense-and-reason magic against Katie – but _not_ before The Addiction or The Disorder or The Virginlessness – she would lay awake at night and imagine what it would be like to arrive here for the first time. To step onto the sand and look at the endless plane of waves that would forever separate her from the ghosts. To look around and realize that no one knows her and no one really cares to know her.

Instead, the plane lands when it is dark, and there is no sun. Not even the metaphorical kind.

…

Instead, it's Clare who comes stumbling into his doorway tonight. Jake's stepsister's curls are disheveled with sleep, the tossing and turning kind, he thinks, and her blue eyes are wide and dark. Her hand gropes the side of the wall for a long time, trying to find a light switch, but in the end, she just lets it drop and rushes to his side.

"What'swrong?Areyouokay?ShouldIcallourparents?" When Clare is scared, she doesn't breath between words.

Jake turns to her, and for a moment, he just looks at Clare like he did the moonlight a few seconds ago. Because last time he woke up screaming, Clare was tiny and four-eyed and fun to throw dead frogs at. And, though he knows she's here and scared and completely unaware of his state of mind, Jake can't help but want her to leave.

"Jake?" She finally huffs.

He looks into her eyes for a minute, looks until she's familiar again, and then he glances back at the moonlight – only to realize that it's still foreign. And even though his concerned stepsister is still waiting for an answer, Jake has to stop for a moment and try to remember when Clare Edwards became more natural than the moonlight.

He shakes his head, and she moves so that it rests on her bare shoulder blade. "I feel like she died," Jake whispers into her skin.

Clare's chuckles – a half-hearted, shaky sound. "But that's the thing, isn't it?" She murmurs, resting her head over his now, "She's living her life. That's why she's gone."

.

.

.

_Three months pass._

.

They're rushing out the door when He calls.

Jake has the screen propped open with his boot, his hand moving blindly over the keys rack around the corner. (He's determined not to let that damn door shut. If he does, even for a moment, it will stay like that all night.)

"We don't have time for that," he groans when he hears the phone ring, "Mall closes at six on Sundays." He says it even though he knows Clare won't listen. No matter how many times that phone disappoints her, she's still at her feet every time it calls.

"Don't care. Shut up, shut up! It's _Him_."

God forbid Jake talk over _Him._

"It's _your_ Homecoming," he mutters, "_I_ don't care if you don't have a dress."

The thing is, though, he does sort of care. Not only because Jake might just care about his new sister more than any big brother should – might just know enough about her to know that she'll say wearing last year's dress doesn't bother her, even though it does to no end – but also because he likes to visit the mall where Drew Torres works.

He's never actually spoken to the boy, not since high school, and even then it was never a direct conversation. Once or twice, Jake had found himself surrounded by a group of Mo's friends, and Drew Torres – the QB1, the former-womanizer-turned-steady-man, the kid who killed a thug last year – had been a part of it. See, Drew was a plenty interesting guy, but none of the things that made him that way were what one would call ideal conversation-starters.

Drew was also the boy whom Katie had lost her virginity to. Jake thinks he ought to hate Drew for it, but it's awfully hard, as you watch every friend you've ever had move on, to hate the only other person who's stuck around. In fact, Jake's too tired to hate anybody these days.

Clare walks into the kitchen then. Jake's foot is still in the door, and it's when she looks at him with a half-hearted smirk on her lips, that he knows something is wrong.

"That was quick."

"Yeah," Clare murmurs, looking at her shoes, "he only had time for a short call." The girl swallows.

"Is everything okay?"

Clare smiles then – only it's not a happy smile. It's the kind that people make when they're about to cry, without the amount of control to pull off a frown. A crumpling sort of smile. "Eli can't make it up here for Homecoming."

There's silence.

"I'm sorry, Clare." And he is. He really, truly is. Because Jake knows Eli, knows Clare, knows Eli and Clare together – and this isn't something to be taken lightly. Even if both will try to.

"It's okay. No big deal." She swallows again.

"Do you still want to go to the dance? I can take you to get a dress right now if you want."

There's another crumpling smile from his stepsister, and she just shrugs and shakes her head. "I think I'll skip out on Homecoming this year."

"You mean, your _senior_ year?"

She winces a little at that, but in the end just nods. "It wouldn't be the same without him," she decides, and even though her voice is shaking, it is with conviction.

He doesn't ask her any more questions, because he knows what it's like to be interrogated when all you want to do is be alone. So, he tells her it's okay and let's her go up to her room and tries really hard not to think about her crying up there.

And he pulls his boot away, drops his hand from the key rack, and let's the door close.

…

They called it Hell Week.

It wasn't really an official name, only because Coach Barrett couldn't say it whenever an administrative worker was around. Like H-E-double-hockey-sticks is bound to start a community high school religious outbreak or something. (The Bakers weren't around back then.) Anyway, it was the week before soccer practices officially started, a series of morning practices dedicated strictly to conditioning. You didn't even have to wear cleats.

The athletic director said it wasn't mandatory, that it was against the rules to force girls to come out before the season officially kicked off, but anyone who planned on being anyone was there. And God, it was hell.

The weight-lifting wasn't half-bad, only because a coach can't exactly push you too close to your limits when you've got a eighty-pound barbell over your head. One step too far there, and you had a snapped neck.

But the running – _God,_ the running. For some reason, Coach Barrett decided that collapsing from a stroke after ten laps around that fucking track was a much kinder death than dropping a too-heavy weight on your head. And so the team ran until a minimum of four girls puked (Katie's pretty sure that's how he determined when it was time to stop, even if he claimed to have a pre-practice plan).

"Notice," he used to say, "how no one has fainted. And no one will, I can promise you. Because, believe it or not, your mind gives up way before your body has to."

And Katie believed that. It made complete sense. What she didn't understand, however, was why her Coach made out the body to be more important than the mind. As far as she had always seen it, when it came to endurance, the weakest part of you was the only one that really mattered.

At any rate, back then she hated to run. She was fast, and often times, she led the pack, but nevertheless, she hated it. When you're running, you think of nothing but the pain.

But now everything is different. She hasn't spoken to Coach Barrett in more than the year. She hasn't spoken to anyone, actually. Not even Clare. (She should, she knows. Clare is the best person she's ever known; she at least deserves a phone call. But what if _he _picks up the phone? What if _his _voice sounds in the background?)

Everything is different, and now she runs.

The pier, the boardwalk, the campus sidewalks – wherever people don't stare at a runner. She clips her iPod shuffle to her tank-top, and she takes off for miles, sometimes hours of running. Christine, her boy-obsessed roommate, tells her she ought to compete in marathons. Last time her friend told her that, Katie said she'd think about it, even though she hasn't and probably won't.

Maybe she will one day. For now, though, she just runs, and she thinks of nothing but the pain.

…

"It might be fun, you know."

They're in Jake's room. He's laying horizontally across his bed, back to the mattress, head dangling over the side with a backward glance at Clare who's perched on a bean bag chair in the corner, playing with a wooden figurine.

She snickers without looking up. "Wouldn't that be sort of weird? Going to Homecoming with your stepbrother?"

"It never stopped us before."

She chuckles then, finally looking up to him with an arch of one eyebrow. "Touché."

"I mean, the whole world knows you're dating Eli. If anyone asks, just say he couldn't make it, and you didn't want to go alone."

She smiles a little. "The thing is, though, the whole world also knows that I dated you last year, and if I showed up at Homecoming with you . . . you know, with the slow dances . . . Well, it's just – you know how kids talk."

"Why does it matter what they say?"

Clare shrugs, falling silent, and he waits for a long time before realizing she has no intentions of speaking up again.

"Okay, fine," he amends, "We don't have to go _together _together. But I'm not going let you miss Homecoming your senior year and listen to you whine about how you should have gone for the rest of our lives." – at that, she laughs – "Just get me a visitor's pass, and I'll come as company. I won't slow-dance with you. I won't get pictures with you. I won't even walk in with you if you're that worried of someone getting the wrong impression. In fact, maybe I'll even grab my own date once I get there."

Clare shoots up laughing. "And there lies the mastermind's motive!"

"I was joking."

_"Sure,_ you were."

He was though. Even if he wishes he hadn't been.

…

Katie first meets the man outside of her English class. He's yelling over his shoulder to a friend down the hall, walking in the opposite direction he's looking, and when Katie turns the corner out of her classroom, the two collide.

Her binder drops to the floor, papers scattering everywhere, and in an instant, the man is on his knees to gather them. She starts to lean over too, but by that time, he's nearly done.

He's a tall man with short curly hair, dark brown and shiny, defined cheekbones, and dark green eyes like the ocean, and he seems to have a soft face, even though, right now, he's apologizing profusely. "I'm so sorry! I wasn't watching where I was going, and I just barreled right into you!"

Katie shrugs and shakes her head. "Gosh, no. You're fine. It's no problem, really." She ducks her head then and begins to turn away, but the man catches up with her.

"I see you running around campus sometimes, usually really intense. Are you some kind of track star or something?"

For a moment, Katie just stares at him, dumbfounded that he's still here. "Um, no actually. I just like to run." She looks down at her books and walks faster, but it doesn't seem to faze him; he merely picks up the pace.

"Well, why not join? Not a competition-kind-of-girl or something?"

"I used to be," she mumbles, "I played soccer, but then I tore my ACL."

That seems to take him off guard, and there's the slightest part of Katie that is smiling at this, even though she can't even remember what flirting feels like. "Wow. That sucks. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she says, _Sports are pointless anyway. I know that now._

He nods, and they look at each other for a moment until finally, Katie holds out a hand, because there's nothing else to say. "Katie Matlin." Her voice comes out rather raspy.

"Austin," he smiles, "Austin Mikalison."

He keeps his grip for a long moment after Katie loosens her. "Well, I guess I'll see you around, Katie Matlin With the Torn ACL."

She smirks. "Maybe, you will, Austin Mikalison With . . . ?"

He laughs. "Wouldn't _you_ like to know." And then he's gone.

For some reason, Katie's stomach is sinking.

…

Days later, Clare finally agrees to go to Homecoming ("technically" with him). So, they drive down to the mall, and Jake takes his usual seat at a table in the food court while Clare walks off in the direction of Deb.

"Jake Martin."

He's only on the second page of his magazine (and his first order of French fries) when the voice sounds above him. Surprised, Jake looks up to see Drew Torres standing on the other side of the table, a Subway hoagie tucked under his wrist.

"Drew," Jake greets.

And the boy smiles down at him and takes a seat and soon, they're deep in conversation about school and headquarters and jobs. And Jake feels like an idiot for never approaching the boy before.

…

About half-way through Drew's footlong and Jake's diet Pepsi (the French fries are long-gone), Drew halts his continuous cycle of hauling food into his mouth and stares at the table with rather distant eyes. "So, are you and Katie still . . .?"

"No." Jake doesn't mean to answer so stiffly, but he does.

Drew, however, doesn't seem to notice. He just nods, what looks to be almost painfully. "You guys don't keep in touch or anything, do you?"

"No."

"Right. Yeah. I wouldn't think so."

They eat and drink in silence for a few more minutes before Drew speaks up again. "I just – I just wish I had said something to her, you know? Before she left. I mean, it is pretty much my fault she hates it here."

"No," Jake assures, much more sympathetically than he ever thought he would when talking to the boy who drunkenly took the virginity of the girl he loves. "No, she had a lot of other things going on with her."

Drew purses his lips solemnly. "Yeah, I know. With the bulimia and the drugs and all that shit."

For some stupid reason, hearing Drew say this – as if it's common knowledge or something – makes Jake's chest quiver. Katie's drug addiction and eating disorder had been two topics that it took her months of dating to even touch on with Jake, let alone truly open up about.

"Yeah," is all he can manage.

"Still," Drew sighs, "what I did was so stupid. And now, I'll probably never see her again. I just wish I had apologized, you know?"

Before Jake can think about it, he nods and whispers, "Thank you."

And Drew just gives him a sad look and waits for him to realize his mistake.

…

Austin is a chemistry major. When he first says it, Katie feels her face drop a little. She's quick to make up for it, but not quite quick enough.

"_Okay,_ okay," he chuckles, "I know chemistry is considered boring by the majority of the human race."

They're walking along the campus sidewalk, Austin on the road-side.

"I didn't say that," Katie protests.

"Your face did. And besides, it's okay; I'm not offended."

Katie looks down at her feet rather sheepishly and tries to amend. "Well, it's just that I wouldn't have pegged you for a science-kind-of-guy."

Austin arches an eyebrow. "Do elaborate, Katie Matlin Who Used to be Competitive."

She rolls her eyes. "I don't know. You just seemed . . ." – Katie's mind grapples for the right word – ". . . charismatic." No, no – that's not right.

Austin chuckles. "Oh, I see. You were expecting the stereotypical science geek who spends Saturday nights reading articles about break-throughs in nuclear fusion."

"Nuclear what?"

"Never mind."

She laughs. "But that's not what I meant at all. I just . . . I mean, science people are supposed to like numbers and formulas and lab-steps – solid, definite stuff, you know? I just didn't really get that vibe from you."

He seems to consider this for a moment. And then suddenly, Austin is turning toward her with smoldering, emerald eyes, and the air is uncomfortably heavy. "There's nothing definite about chemistry," he breathes. "It's like life."

She takes an involuntary step back, and Austin's face falls just the slightest – and so does Katie's heart. Aside from Christine, this boy is about the only bearable person here.

"Well, unfortunately, I'm not all that good at either of those" – he smirks – "so maybe, if you have the time, of course, you could fit in tutoring sessions to your schedule . . . ?"

Austin's face lights up for a slip-second – and then closes down into a mischievous countenance. "And what would I be getting in return?" (Before Katie can be startled, he's continuing.) "English lessons, perhaps? I sort of suck at figuring out what dead people meant."

"Actually, I suck at that, too," Katie sighs, but Austin perks up as if she's given him a favorable answer.

"Okay, well then I guess it's settled. I'll tutor you, and we can bask together in the suckiness that is English I."

Katie guffaws.

"Oh, and I meant tutor you in chemistry – not life. I need help with that one, myself."

…

The Homecoming theme is "Light Up the Night." It's really not ingenious (surely, Eli would have scoffed), but it's not entirely corny either. And if art has ever actually existed on this planet, it's the decorations in the gym. The walls are papered down by navy blue banners, speckled by some type of glitter that, with the flashing white lights, is nothing short of blinding, and silver ropes starting at the ceiling corners and leading to the middle are strung with golden star ornaments. Where they all meet, a paper-mache crescent moon dangles down.

When Jake actually went here, he was never much for dances, especially because he spent half his time at Degrassi a new student whose only friends were the handful of Vo-tech kids from Woodshop, and they never went to these events. But now that he's here – and feeling possibly a little nostalgic – he can't help but appreciate it all.

Clare is marveling at the decorations. She doesn't greet many people around her – not like she did last year – and that worries Jake. With Katie having dropped off the face of the Earth and Alli off at MIT, without a moment to spare, nowadays, life, Jake knows, is hard for Clare. It's unfair to her, he thinks. The girl shouldn't feel left behind during her senior year of high school. That feeling ought to be saved for anyone who sticks around afterwards.

She made him promise not to dance with her, and that's how it is for the first hour or so. Jake sits at a table in the back with a plate of food that's never empty and watches lights dance off the glittery walls, listens to unfamiliar music, tries to decide who's high and who's just faking it. A group of girls in the corner nearest him keep looking at him and giggling, until, from the corner of his eyes (as he pretends not to notice), they push one girl out towards him, and she laughs and shakes her head. But they nod at her and giggle some more.

She's a long-legged girl with a short, black dress and too-tall high heels. Her blonde side-bang hides most of her right, dark-lined eye. "Don't you like to dance?" She asks him and then giggles like her friends. At that, he groans a little inside.

"I could ask you the same question," he murmurs, smoothly, "I mean, you and your friends haven't been doing much of it yourselves over in that corner."

The girl turns a bright shade of red. "Um, yeah, yeah I guess you're right."

She's waiting for Jake to ask her to the dance floor, he can tell, but he's silent, and so she just tosses him an awkward goodbye and flees back to her friends, beyond themselves with laughter.

"Not your type?"

Jake looks up to see Clare smirking above him, one eyebrow arched.

"Something like that."

She chuckles and extends a hand down to him, proceeding to lead them out onto the dance floor, a jungle of sweaty limbs and fabric and a minefield of bare feet, as most of the girls have left their heels back at their tables.

He didn't go to his own Homecoming. No one wanted to be asked by him. But now, looking at the lights flashing over teary, shiny faces of strangers, Jake can't help but try to picture what it must have looked like last year. He thinks of Alli Bhandari, the only girl wearing her high heels out on the dance floor, unaware that this would be her last Homecoming. And Jake wonders if there's something about the night she would have changed had she known. He thinks of Mo, dying of exhaustion and drowning himself and anyone around him in sweat, and Marisol, completely oblivious, raging on as she always has.

And then, for a split second, he thinks of Katie. Fresh out of rehab, ready to balance out her life for the first time ever, ready to believe in herself – and in love with the boy beside her. Jake bets that Drew Torres partied like never before at his senior Homecoming.

"She was Homecoming Queen, you know?" It takes him a moment to realize he's said it out loud. It doesn't matter, though; the music is too loud, and Clare isn't looking at his lips – just his eyes.

It's hard to imagine someone changing so fast. A place turning from a safe haven to a room full of ghosts in a moment. Years from now, at high school reunions, people will talk about her, he thinks – the Homecoming Queen who didn't go to Prom.

And with that, the ache is there with him, stronger than it was even those few days after she left. Those days when the numbness died away and left only the pain.

Everything is blurry, and Clare's still staring at his eyes – not his lips – and God, why can't she be here right now?

It's then that he does it. And it's short, and he's not in the right mind – but it still happens.

And Adam Torres is still right beside them.

All in one flash of light, Jake leans down and captures Clare's lips with his own, and it's familiar in a twisted, misplaced kind of way – not at all the comfort he was looking for. His stepsister shrieks and stumbles back into a boy behind her, staring up at him with wide eyes that seem luminescent under the glitter.

"Jake!" She screams, and an apology is instantly quivering at his lips, but he can't seem to force it tumbling out.

"I – I didn't – Clare" –

Clare shakes her head once, flustered beyond orientation, and disappears into the sea of sweaty limbs and bare feet.

Adam shoves past him and follows her.

…

Austin is not a bad runner. But the thing is, he talks far too much.

They're running the beach in bare feet, an idea suggested by, of course, Austin – because Katie only runs where people won't stare at her. And when you run side by side with a good-looking man like Austin, laughing when the freezing water licks at your toes, people look at you.

And the good-hearted, wistful, romatics smile. And the pretentious douchebags rolls their eyes. (At least, they're not carving their names into the sand or something.) And some people just watch you with a blank, empty expression. Katie wonders if maybe they're more complex than all the others.

"So, Katie Matlin With the B- in English, how am I doing so far?"

She smirks. "Well, considering that's the best grade in English I've gotten since junior year, I'd say you're doing A-okay."

But Austin's shoulders fall. "Junior year? That's not that long ago, though."

A whole lot longer than anyone can imagine. Junior year was a world ago. "I'll take what I can get," Katie laughs. She doesn't want to get into this, not now and not ever.

He shrugs. "Well, anyway, that's not what I meant. I meant, how am I _doing?"_

"What?"

"How am I doing at getting you to like me?" Katie pretends not to notice, that Austin's steps are edging closer to her than the sea now. The salty air is so heavy, just like the day of the chemistry-life analogy weeks ago.

"Way better than I thought you would do," she admits and immediately feels guilty when his face lights up. Katie wants to tell him that her expectations were at rock-bottom to begin with, that hitting just a little bit farther up means nothing, but the words are caught in her throat.

"And about how close am I to getting you to go on a date with me?"

Her heart sinks, but she manages out a semi-playful, "Guess, you'll have to catch me first."

And she takes off in a full-out sprint. Because it's all coming back to her in one moment's time – all the pain and the guilt and the exasperation that should have spanned itself out in a month of healthy grieving. And damnit, why didn't she call Clare? Why didn't she ever say she was sorry to Bianca DeSousa? Why did she leave her sister alone to make all the same mistakes?

Why didn't she try harder to love him?

And already, she's made a mess of things here. There's a boy, running behind her, panting out her name, who could be everything to her if only Katie wasn't such a complete and utter wreck. If only she wasn't still in love with a boy who couldn't care less about this world and everything in it. If only she wasn't pretending to think he's stupid for living like that.

And in only a matter of minutes, her sight is blurring away, her breath getting caught in what seems every nook of her throat except the one leading to her lungs. Austin is so far behind her that his call is like a distant city siren. They're all staring at her now, the little kids with their colorful sand-shovels and the three-quarters-of-the-way naked women with their narrow sunglasses. The Look is everywhere.

But she keeps running.

She sprints until her legs give out from under her, and Katie hits the sand with a knocking-force. Her vision dims away with the view of an ocean, stretching far out to the horizon, and the tide sweeps in just enough to brush over her right fingertips. She wants it to sweep over all of her, to swoop out and swallow her whole, wrench her into the waves where she can stay for the rest of her life.

Because, contrary to everything Katie has hoped, everything she has allowed herself to believe, ghosts can, indeed, swim.

.

.

.

_Three years pass._

.

Bianca L. DeSousa

_Andrew M. Torres_

_Your presence is requested._

Katie holds her breath. At the bottom of the invitation, there is a note, scrawled in messy, familiar cursive.

_I bet you thought I forgot about you, Matlin. I bet you thought we all did._


	3. III

**Hey, guys, sorry about the (abnormally, extremely long) wait on this. I haven't dropped it, but things are just crazy right now in my life. When I'm not working or going to class or playing a sport, I'm sleeping, lol.**

**But you don't care about excuses, so here you go, and –while I make no promises – I earnestly will try to get Chapter Four out in reasonable time.**

.

.

.

It rains for three days, so hard and so fast that enough fog has accumulated over the hills and the mountains that from his small house, nestled on low ground to the side of a creek, he can barely make out the outline of the family business down the road, let alone that of the city out in the east.

On the second night, he lights a few candles and gets stoned, so that the entire sitting room is cast upon by a caramel glow that makes the excess water in his eyes glisten. Sometime around eleven, he calls Eli and leaves a message on his cell phone. "It's been raining for almost 48 hours up here, man," he slurs, "You and Clare should really get home quick. I'm starting to think all that shit about the end of the world is real."

The next morning, too early, Eli calls him back; his voice on the other end is soft and clean, and Jake's cracks in all the gruff places and smells like weed. "If it floods on the twenty-first, I'm going to be super pissed. I bought a whole zombie-protection kit off Ebay," he jibes.

But once the conversation has progressed, he asks if Jake was high when he called last night, and Jake says he was, and Eli chuckles, but Jake can hear that it hasn't reached his eyes. He knows Eli will probably sigh when he hangs up and then talk about it with Clare tonight just when she's about to go to sleep.

And then Jake stops thinking, because it's weird to think of his sister in bed. It's weird to think of her worrying about him hundreds of miles away, of her looking out at the stars and the midnight traffic, and realizing that as much as she loves him, this right here is where she needs to be – guiding along her own future, with her school and her lover and all the things one is supposed to have figured out by now.

It's weird to think of her realizing that she just can't look after him anymore.

Later, he thinks about calling Eli back and pleading with him not to tell Clare, but in the end, he figures, Eli will still do what he thinks needs to be done – because that's how Eli is nowadays.

.

.

.

Christine finds the wedding invitation while sorting through all the papers on the desk, in search of a science report. It's one o'clock in the morning, and Katie's roommate is grumbling incoherent complaints, her eyes red and angry, as she tears through the mess of past assignments.

"What the hell?" Katie hisses, rolling over to turn on the lamp on her bedside.

"That asshole doesn't have my grade," she spats, "I turned it in, I got an A, and he doesn't have my grade, and now he's trying to turn it over on me by saying that you're supposed to keep all of your assignments in the case that something like this happens, but – no! That's not my fault, and if I take a zero because my teacher forgot to record my grade, I'm transferring schools, which means, Katie, that if you don't get up and help me find this thing" – Katie's chin drops, her eyebrows rising – "there's a chance that, within 48 hours, you could have a new roommate who hums show tunes under her breath, and has a lisp so that whenever she talks, she spews spit all over you."

Katie turns onto her back and groans.

"What would it look like?"

"Like a science report."

"Gee, thanks, Chris. I'll know the moment I see it."

"I don't remember."

"Then how do you know he graded it?"

Katie has to dodge a slipper flying at her head.

For ten minutes, the two girls stumble throughout the dorm room, pulling out drawers, picking up coats thrown over tables, skimming through old binders. It's Katie to find it in the end; the assignment, graded with red ink, is folded up and tucked in the inside of Chris's biology textbook. A shiny B- glistens on the front.

"An A, huh?"

For a few moments, Christine just purses her lips, but the night is dark and sleepy, and when Katie giggles, Chris's lips break apart into a sheepish, lopsided grin.

"Give it."

"Nope," Katie chuckles, and she starts to tuck it under her shirt.

"Oh, what is this, fifth grade? I have no problem going up there to get my paper back; everybody knows that college junior year is the experimental one" – Katie throws her head back in guffaws – "I've felt a few girls up in my time," Chris continues, "Granted, I was under the influence of a wide range of hallucinogens at the moment, but you could probably argue that the two Monsters I downed a few hours ago, combined with my level of drowsiness, is enough to classify me as intoxicated."

"You are the weirdest person I've ever met."

"Give it."

"Nope."

"Fine," Chris shrugs, and then, so fast that Katie has no time to react, she grabs the invitation from behind the vanity mirror. "I guess I'll just keep _this_ then."

"Chris" – she starts to object, but the girl just continues.

"Oh, Katie couldn't make it," she mocks, "so she sent me, and boy, are you hot! Look at you, twenty-one and about to throw your life away. Let's elope."

"Give it."

"_You_ give it."

"Fine," Katie deadpans, pulling the folded up science report from under her sports bra strap and tossing it to Chris.

_"Reow."_

Katie just snatches the invitation and puts in back on the vanity. She feels the giddiness deflating from her chest like a wheezing balloon.

"Katie?"

But Katie doesn't answer, just curls up in the sheets and rolls over, so that she won't have to see The Look. Nevertheless, it burns a patch on her back all through the night, and when she dreams, she's back in Toronto at that musty, old bar on the outside of the city, and Bianca DeSousa's eyes are watery; the white, soft lights dancing over the walls make them shine.

Katie takes a sip of the champagne, and it is bitter, burning her throat on the way down and making her gag. And Bianca just smirks like she did that first night at the club and takes the bottle from her.

She drinks long and hard.

.

.

.

The Third Day (which, Jake realizes only after he's mentally referred to it at this a great many times, sounds rather religious), Jake, wrapped up in a black raincoat that his father gave him for Easter last year, spends most of his afternoon out on the small deck in the back of the house, overlooking the creek – a once gentle, trickling element of nature that, in the past few days, has become wild and frantic in its own small-scale way.

He watches Marvin the Rambunctious play with washed-up worms at the end of the driveway. MTR (Marvin, Marv, Vin, Ram, and – the occasional – Little Shit) is a puppy that Jake found drinking from the creek almost a year ago, collarless and lost; it was cold, mid November, and Marvin was limping, and the only reason Jake had even been down at the dirt shore to notice him was because he wanted to sit on the rock that breaks the water on the other side of the creek. (He goes there whenever his phone hasn't rung in a few days.)

And from there, with that puppy whimpering to his left and the water swooshing on with its soft, gentle breath to his right, for once the house up the hill looked like a home.

Marvin isn't housebroken, and he cries if you don't feed him at precisely 8:02, and whenever Jake's high, Marv eats the ends off all the shoe's laces that are on the rack in the front walkway. But looking at him now, placing his nose tentatively to the ground before lurching back with what looks to be yipes (though inaudible over the rain), Jake can't remember a single time when he truly wanted MTR gone.

"Dude?" The question is loud at first, but the rain blotches it out all in one moment.

Jake turns to see Drew peeking his neck around the cracked screen door; he's squinting, his eyebrows mangled and the spikes on his hair turning in from the rain that glistens in them. "What are you doing out here?" He asks.

"It was too loud in the house."

Another mangled-eyebrow look.

"You could have let me know you were coming. What if I wasn't here?"

"You're always here," Drew chuckles, and then when Jake doesn't laugh, amends, "Or up there," with a westward nod in the direction of the business.

Jake just grunts.

Drew clears his throat and continues. "Anyway, um, you're coming with me."

"What?"

"Yeah, like right now. We're going to a game."

"In mid-December?"

"Yeah."

"Too cold." He means to say the words firmly, but the rain sputters off his lips.

"You're a douche, and yes we are going."

"I know."

.

.

.

"What are we doing here?"

The field is six miles from the house; Jake can't imagine how Drew ever found it. It's a barren, frosted-over piece of land that stretches from the dirt road all the way to a line of dark, jagged trees, clawing up at the sky.

Drew doesn't answer as he pulls the car to a halt. Instead, he looks at the road straight ahead; it leads far out to a barn-looking house before dropping off in a dip.

"What if I'm making a mistake?"

Jake softens.

A leaf, brittle and long forgotten, dances over the road in front of them.

"Why would you say that?"

Drew looks ready to cry; his eyes shift from the windshield to his hands, clutched tight around the steering wheel. He looks at them like they're not his hands.

"Because," he breathes, and his voice is hoarse and trembling, "people change all the time, and what if marriage is just _stupid. _I mean, you've seen the statistics" –

"Dude, those are bullshit."

"No, they're not, Jake!" At this, his hands take a particularly strong jolt over the wheel. "All I'm saying is maybe love isn't meant to last a whole lifetime. Has anyone ever stopped to really think about that? I mean, don't you think the world would be a much better place if we just loved until we didn't want to, and then once it was over, we fell in love again, with new people, and it just kept going like that?"

Jake doesn't say it, but the truth is he wonders this all the time. The thing is, he's always figured that the reason behind these feelings is that the one girl he could have given forever to didn't want it with him.

"Drew, what about families? What about what happens when one person wants to leave and the other wants to stay?"

"I don't know, damn it. I'm just _saying."_

"Well, I'm sure this will all go over great with Bianca."

"Would you _stop_ with the sarcasm for _once?"_

Jake sits back in his seat, his jaw clenching up a little.

"Who are _you_ to judge _me_ when it comes to love? The last time you ever loved a girl was Katie, and look how that turned out. How many second-dates have you had since then?"

Jake lets out a strong breath that he's been holding in.

There is silence then. Jake can hear Drew swallow hard, followed by a small huff afterwards.

"Dude, I'm sorry," Drew mutters. "Oh, God. Please don't say anything about this. It's just with all the wedding plans and realizing that you're going to be _married, _and that it's not just about fun now; it's about commitment and work and family, I just had a moment – that's all. And what I said about Katie, that was stupid. That was insanely stupid."

"What game are we playing?"

"What?" Drew blinks, and then a slow grin is creeping over his face.

"You heard me."

He reaches into the backseat, pulling a football from under his coat. "Well, I was thinking maybe we could throw a few" –

Jake snatches it from him. "Go long."

.

.

.

She leaves on a day when the ocean is still. The sky is made of fog; it looks as though it will swallow anyone to enter it.

Christine tells her not to go thwarting any white veil occasions.

.

.

.

Jake swears that the rain stops the moment Clare is back in town.

"False alarm," he tells her when she stands outside on his porch, the sky faded and dull in the aftermath of the flood, and she is radiant as ever, "The Mayans were, as internationally predicted, full of shit."

"I don't know, Jake. We ran over three zombies on the way up here."

They share a lopsided grin; he loves Clare's smiles, because they're the only things about her that aren't perfectly in order or under control or just flat out symmetrical.

"Jesus," his sister remarks as she steps inside, glancing over the living room floor, scattered with buckets that create a chorus of bells throughout the home. From the kitchen, Marvin scurries in, huffing and drooling.

"Hewwo, Marvin," Clare coos, bending down and allowing the beagle to jump and lean against her thighs, "How's my boy?"

"Just fine, actually," Jake mocks, "Thank you for asking."

Clare snickers, but it is short-lived. Suddenly, something in her eyes is fading, just like the sky outside, and though she continues to stroke Marvin's head, her hand seems to move on its own accord now. She watches the side of his face, watches it with a careful absentmindedness.

"Are you really, Jake?"

_Damnit, Eli._

"Just peachy."

"You don't say words like 'peachy.'"

"How would you know?" The words were supposed to be a light-hearted joke, but somehow, Jake completely deadpans them.

"Are you really going to start with that?"

"With what, Clare? Please enlighten me."

Clare stops petting Marvin all together and gently lifts him off of her before standing up again. She purses her lips and arches one eyebrow and looks over Jake's shoulder, through the screen door and out at the rushing creek near the end of the yard. "With the whole living-your-life-is-a-crime-Clare, thing."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he mutters bitterly.

She looks at him for a long time, her eyes dark and exasperated. He wishes she would take her shoes off.

"Be at the house at two. Take a shower first. You smell like weed and Listerine."

_Just take your damn shoes off, Clare._

"Whatever."

Clare huffs out an incredulous scoff and turns to the door. She calls to him over her shoulder just before she leaves, her voice suddenly hoarse.

"Merry Christmas, Jake."

.

.

.

Seeing Maya for the first time in three years is like seeing the girl she tried so hard to be in high school. Katie can't decide if she's vicariously pleased enough to be ecstatic or selfish enough to be jealous, but she knows one thing, and that's that, for some reason, she can't look her sister in the eyes for too long.

Maya is a defender for the varsity soccer team, and, just as Katie remembers, a music prodigy, and she's grown into her features – ditched the glasses and the sports bras and, apparently, Campbell, too.

Because the moment Katie asks about him (that's all she really has to ask about), Maya just shrugs and says, "We broke up. We were too different." And even though Katie can't remember them being remotely different at all, she shrugs, too.

"What's new?"

It isn't until Katie asks the question that she realizes just how stupid it sounds.

But the two are alone in a new room that's been painted a new color (purple to maroon and black), and the television's channel has been switched so many times that it would be absurd to use that as an excuse not to talk. So, she does. And the words are cumbersome.

Maya raises her eyebrows and then reaches over to the bedside table to pick up a dart. She stares straight ahead at the board, but Katie watches her sister's fingers as they twirl the dagger; it's a fluid motion.

"Oh, you know." With a quick snap of her wrist, the dart is across the room. It lands in the green, just below a bulls-eye. There's a contained sort of bitterness in her sister's voice. "Three years passed: I played the cello, I made the soccer team, I grew boobs, and I dated boys. You're all caught up."

"Maya" –

"I'm sure Hawaii was beautiful."

.

.

.

Eli is fast-asleep on his father's sofa when Jake finally drags himself through the door of the Old House; his long-ago, once-upon-a-time best friend keeps turning over on the cushions, and Jake fears that any minute now, he's about to go tumbling down to the carpet.

"It was a long car-ride," Helen explains from the kitchen where she's tossing a garden salad with two wooden prongs. "But Clare's upstairs with your father."

Jake chuckles. "Yeah, I think I ought to give her 'til dinner to cool off."

Helen's face drops. "What?"

"I was a dick."

"Ah."

(Helen doesn't flinch at that word like she used to.)

Just then, there's a loud thud; it shakes the floorboards throughout the whole first story. Jake guffaws. Eli keeps sleeping. Helen slides a napkin under his cheek to keep his drool off the carpet.

.

.

.

Maya smiles a lot today, but never once at Katie – which, consequently, makes it rather hard for Katie to smile at all. And so when her Aunt Meredith comes rushing in with presents tucked under both arms and then drops them all to run to Katie (who, at the time, is bent up in quite an awkward position over in the corner), Katie hasn't a clue how to work her arms. She just leans there, silently and hesitantly, until the woman steps away from her with disappointed eyes.

"What's wrong?" She deadpans, "Did that Hawaii sun suck all the life out of you?"

That night, Katie lies awake in a house that's bright on the outside and dark in the inside and thinks the life-sucking started long before that.

.

.

.

Clare insists Eli be allowed to keep sleeping (even if he is blocking anyone from sitting on the sofa), but on holidays, Helen conjures up a superfluous amount of antsy-ness, so much so that Jake's surprised the very weight of her constant glances at him hasn't woken Eli up half an hour ago. And Jake's all for waking up the boy if it means they can finally eat dinner.

"Ice water or bullhorn?" Jake's father chuckles (his jokes get impressively worse every year), and Clare shoves his shoulder with a small grin – though she doesn't relent and agree to go shake Eli awake as Jake thinks everyone assumed she would.

In the end, though, no bullhorns are necessary. Just as it seems the very rise and fall of a sleeping boy's chest has sent Clare and Helen into one of their deadlocks, Eli rolls over in a sort of jolt and whacks his head against the coffee table.

A snort breaks through Jake's lips before he can stifle it.

Clare rushes over to her groaning boyfriend, rubbing at his forehead. "It's not funny," she hisses back at Jake.

Jake clears his throat. "Sorry."

"You just think everything's a joke, don't you?"

"Clare" – Eli tries to cut in, disorientated and taken aback by her hostility.

"I thought we were just gonna let this go," Jake sighs.

"Am I missing something?" His father mutters to Helen, his hand clenched around a ham-clad fork.

"They're fighting."

"Oh."

"Jake was a dick."

"Oh."

Eli tries again. "Seriously, Clare, I mean it _was_ sort of funny" –

"I'm not talking about just now!"

Of course, she isn't. Clare never talks about just now.

"Look, I know I was a jerk this morning, but I wasn't being myself. You know I'm not" –

"You stopped being yourself a long time ago, Jake, and you know it!" Clare's face flushes a deep red, her eyes glistening in the candle-lit room, and Eli rests a hesitant hand on her shoulder.

And Jake just stands there, looking into Clare's eyes, waiting for them to become familiar again like that night so many years ago when he woke up screaming – but they don't this time. He's looking at the people around him, cast in a warm glow like they're supposed to be a home, but he just sees his father with a new smile and a strange new woman who brings with her a strange new girl.

Jake hasn't a clue what Clare could be talking about, because the truth of the matter is, he's the same Jake he was when his father dragged him to this dreaded city, and he'll be that same Jake for the rest of his life.


End file.
